Obsession: Taking Better Photographs, Part 2

Part 2 of a series documenting Kate’s efforts to take a decent photograph. Part 1 appeared last week.

Step 4: Get to Know Your Camera

My choice, but there are several available for most major models of camera.

The manuals for most cameras are pretty terrible for photographers in my position. They’re sort of like computer manuals – they explain what a button does (e.g. “Av sets the camera into Aperture Priority mode”) without actually explaining what that all means and why I would want to do it.

You can’t get better at something without practicing, and it was Caro who suggested a ‘photo a day’ project. Â Every day, I make a point of taking out the camera and take some photographs. Easy.

And every day, I make a point of looking at the shots I’ve taken and posting one of them to my ‘Photo a Day‘ page on my blog. They are not all good – in fact, most of them aren’t – but being forced to look through them and choose which one I like best is making me really look at the pictures I’ve taken.

And all the shots have something to teach me. For example, I love this one, except for the edge of the table on the right side, and the stray sunglasses on the left. And if I’d cropped those out, I would have lost the top of the straw.

Not bad - getting better.

However, I like the composition and the colors – the red and white of the straw really pops – Â and the light is pretty good.

This is the great thing about digital photography – you’re not paying for film or developing – it costs the same to take 200 pictures as it does to take 2. And as long as you’ve got space on your memory card, you can take as many as you want. Take the same picture from 10 different angles. Take Â the same pictureÂ with and without flash. TakeÂ the same pictureÂ on fully automatic mode and in other modes. Take the same picture with different settings.

It’s all very orangey-brown: orangey-brown dog on orangey knitting on orangey-brown floor. And the framing is pretty terrible: there’s a chair leg center left, a corner of our kitchen floor top right, and part of the seat of a chair bottom right. And this was taken at night, so the flash is reflecting off the floor just above the dog.

But it’s a picture, and it taught me a lot about color. Now, wouldn’t that blanket look great against the concrete I used for the background of the picture of the book, top left? Hmm….

Thank you for the inspiration to pick up a camera again. I used to dabble in photography back in the day of film but soon kids/family stuff got in the way and I got lazy. I relied on a point and shoot for years but my eyes have been opened with your posts. Learning to take good photos now seems so much easier in the digital age. Can’t wait for your next post.